I’ve got some stuff in 4K. Most of it is either direct stream or direct play for any device that supports 4K (so far and from my own personal experience, but I’ve got quite a few). Most of the stuff I’ve got on there is there in two versions though, both 1080p and 4K. My laptop and the main TV display 4K, the rest is all 1080p or even 720p in the guest room.
The problem I’ve got is that, if I enable hardware transcoding with just intel QSV, there’s a maximum of 3 people (sometimes even 2) that are able to watch something. When I have only software transcoding enabled, 8 simultaneous transcodes don’t really seem to be an issue at all.
So what I’m looking for, and this is quite complex, is a major change in the way that Plex handles the way it serves the source files.
Currently, when using Plex web on a 720p screen, even a 1080p movie will get transcoded to 720p, at least in Chrome, so you are able to detect the settings client side and send them server side; this means that if there’s both a 1080p and a 720p version available, and the client resolution is 720p or less, it should automatically serve the 720p. Even if transcoding is necessary because of the codec (h265 in a browser is impossible on Windows for example), transcoding from a different resolution impacts quality and perfomance more than direct play or direct stream in my experience. So; offer the lower quality one automatically. Choose the correct version. This is especially annoying with 4K source material, when there’s a 1080p version available as well, because of the earlier mentioned transcoding limitations.
Now, it’s completely possible that I’ve configured something incorrectly, but this is always the observed behavior so far.
Secondly, I’d like to see the possibility of both hardware ánd software transcoding simultaneously. Move the 4K-transcoding job for stuff that isn’t available in 1080p to QSV/NVENC/VCE followed by the second most intensive job et cetera.
Thirdly, in the long run, it would be very nice to see full cooperation between the transcoding platforms; Have an NVIDIA card ánd Intel QSV? Use both. They’re both great.
